Friday, August 13, 2010

Paper Oh Paper

On Wednesday, I purchased my first paper calendar since I bought my Palm pda in 2001. For me, this is a huge deal. I loved my palm. Every date, every address, every task - all of it was in my palm. I checked it everyday. I was a law student, so I synced it to my computer on a daily basis. Finally, palm moved to all cell phones, while I was working in my law office, and I bought a palm cell.

Frankly, I hated it. I constantly found myself dialing a number while I was trying to look something up. The new desktop software would never sync perfectly with my old data (some from 2001) and much of it was lost. It only stays charged for about 9 hours. Ugh.

When I got to my new job last October, we had to use a blackberry. I like the blackberry much better, but I hate Outlook. It syncs funny to my blackberry, so that even though all the tasks are there, they are hard to find and harder to read. You can't just glance and see if a note is attached to the task. I depend on my IT department (rather than myself) to keep it syncing. And everyone at work can see my calendar. Of course, I can make all my personal stuff read private, but what a pain! The twist is that I have to use Outlook for work appointments, so I felt forced to use it for personal stuff. I am a BIG believer in one calendar, but it was becoming clear that if it had to be Outlook-based, I wasn't going to get used to it.

So I'm now a two calendar girl. If something personal is happening during the workday, it will go on my blackberry and personal calendar. That rarely happens, because I'm busy working at work. If something work-related goes beyond work hours, it goes on both calendars. Otherwise, work goes on blackberry/Outlook and personal goes on my paper calendar. Since I always have my blackberry with me, I think it'll work out. And there's just not a good handheld option. All the handhelds now just seem to be extensions of the desktop. And I want to do my calendaring at the parent-teacher conference (when the teacher asks us to bring snacks to class next week) or at the grocery store (when they are out of Tide Free and I need a note to get some on Monday) or at dinner (when a friend wants to follow-up with coffee next week).

The one caveat is that addresses are still all going in Outlook. My blackberry is with me and it does that really well.

Next blog entry: all the crap I need to remember about using a paper calendar!